For stockpiling and transport purposes, clothing is usually stored in a folded or hung state, sometimes with some protective packaging. This means that the storage area and transportation requirements of a clothing distributor or retailer are high. Also, clothing displays occupy a substantial floor area that must be dedicated largely or exclusively to the display of clothing. Such considerations limit the types of retail store in which clothing may be sold and the locations within retail stores at which clothing may be displayed.
Conventionally, impulse purchase items are located at or near the point of sale, near store tills or cash registers where space and browsing opportunities are typically limited. For example, impulse purchase items are often displayed on stands, such as racks or carousel stands, located at or near the point of sale. It follows that impulse purchase items need to be compact and easy to browse and to handle.
In their normal folded or hung form, articles of clothing are not ideally suited for display as an impulse purchase item near the point of sale. They require specialised storage and display installations such as clothing racks and shelf units, which take up a lot of space and cannot easily be browsed by shoppers queuing near the cash registers of a store.
One possible solution to this problem is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,021,626. This discloses a standard beverage vending machine, adapted to dispense containers shaped like drinks cans but containing compressed articles of clothing such as T-shirts packaged. This increases the density of clothing items stored in a given floor area but the vending machine itself occupies significant space and is not suitable for use in all scenarios. Also, a vending machine does not lend itself to browsing the items within.
The proposal in U.S. Pat. No. 6,021,626 has novelty value but little else. A more effective known solution comprises articles of clothing such as T-shirts compressed into a small shrink-wrapped cube with a side of about 50 mm. An array of such cubes may be stored and displayed in an advantageously compact display unit near the point of sale or at another location within a store such as the end of an aisle. This significantly increases the number of garments that may be displayed per unit storage area and/or volume, and also reduces storage and transport costs.
A significant shortcoming of this and other known retail-ready packaging solutions is their unsuitability for mailing. Known solutions require the consumer to repackage retail-ready packaged goods in mailable parcels and/or other packaging, prior to mailing. The additional cost and time required of the consumer in carrying out these additional actions are inconveniences and barriers to impulse purchase, particularly for gift purposes.
In particular, a consumer wishing to mail a purchased article such as a garment to a recipient is required to purchase additional mailable packaging for the article, and to purchase postage separately. Such mailable packaging will usually have to be bought from a different retail store than where the article was purchased. For example, a consumer that has purchased a garment from a clothing store intended to be mailed to a recipient must subsequently go to a stationery store and/or a post office to purchase a mailable package for the garment and to pay for the necessary postage. Also, such a package is generally classed as a parcel and this necessitates a visit to a post office or other parcel depot to hand the package over.
The whole process is inconvenient and may therefore deter the consumer from purchasing the garment. A further consideration is that the associated cost of such mailable packaging may also be difficult for the consumer to justify, where the value of the garment is relatively low compared to the cost of the packaging. This may particularly be the case for a low-cost impulse-bought article.
The cost of known mailable packaging solutions is in part dictated by their manufacturing cost. Known mailable packages are made from several pieces of material cut into complex shapes and assembled in multiple steps, which increase manufacturing complexity and the associated manufacturing costs. For example, a rectangular package is typically manufactured from a sheet of material, which is first cut into a complex shape, may optionally be glued to a second cut sheet of material, and then folded to form the rectangular package. The cutting step inevitably produces some waste material, which is inefficiently discarded.
One known solution for increasing the efficient use of packaging material is disclosed in US Patent Publication No. 2006/0283922 A1. This discloses a packet or envelope manufactured by folding a single sheet of square material. However, the disclosed packet has limited functional use: it is only suitable for packaging very small items such as pills. It is unsuitable for packaging larger objects, such as books or articles of clothing.